Former Steel CEO: Trump Is Right to Hit Back at 'Cheating' China

Dan DiMicco, the former CEO of U.S. steelmaker Nucor, said President Donald Trump is right to slap tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, especially from China.

“The hard reality for most domestic manufacturers including the steel industry is that we’ve been in a trade war for 20 years,” DiMicco said on CNBC. “And now is the first time we’re standing up and saying, ‘Enough’s enough! We’re going to fight back!’”

President Trump on Thursday said he will approve plans to impose 25 percent duties on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum even as allies and some advisers objected.

Investors who must have fallen asleep during Trump’s presidential campaign reacted negatively to his plan as the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 366 points, or 1.5 percent, to 24,669.

“You’re going to see a lot of good things happen. You’re going to see expansion of the companies,” Trump said. “When it comes to a time when our country can’t make aluminum and steel, you almost don’t have much of a country.”

Trump justified the tariffs with a little-used Cold War era law that gives presidents the power to cut imports that could be a threat to “national security,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

DiNicco said the stock market decline was a “major overreaction” and that warnings on inflation were scare tactics typical of Wall Street. Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council who used to be president of Goldman Sachs, may leave the White House because of Trump’s decision on tariffs, Politico reported, citing unnamed sources.

“The costs of steel are a small portion of most of the products that people are afraid about influencing,” DiNicco said, pointing out that an unlikely rise in steel prices of $100 a ton would barely affect the price of a car that only uses about a ton of steel.

“You’re talking about the car costing $100 to $200 more on a $30,000 car or a $20,000 car or an $80,000 car,” he said. “This is a non-issue in terms of the fear mongering that’s going on by the folks on Wall Street and elsewhere.”

“We’re fighting back for them to abide by the rules they agreed to when they joined the WTO, for them to abide by the rules they agreed to when they got permanent favored nation trading status with the United States,” DiNicco said. “They’ve been cheating. They steal our IT. They cheat on the products. They subsidize. They manipulate their currency. We’ve been in a trade war, and we’re the ones that have been decimated because of this.”

Anybody who is surprised by Trump’s actions didn’t paid pay much attention to his presidential campaign or his long history of criticizing China for unfair trade practices.

“Trump is delivering on his campaign promises to the American people, to working men and women who put him in office,” DiNicco said. “Trump is just getting started when it comes to trade.”

DiNicco, who ran Nucor from 2000 until 2012, served as a trade adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign. He currently is chairman of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a non-profit group that has opposed trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Trump shelved after describing it as “a rape of our country.”

“Each one of those parts of the plan act together in a synergistic fashion to deliver exactly what he promised to the American people,” DiNicco said. “Our economy is going to benefit because he’s executing on the entire plan, not just one segment of it.”

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